Dallas County Pretrial Diversion Program: Eligibility and Tracks

The Dallas County pretrial diversion program lets qualifying first-time offenders resolve felony or misdemeanor charges without a guilty plea or a trial. Run by the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, it puts you under supervision for 3 to 18 months, and when you finish every condition, the DA dismisses your case and you become immediately eligible to have the arrest expunged.¹

The agreement is directly between you and the prosecutor. You never enter a plea. If you complete the program, no conviction ever attaches to your record.¹

Who Qualifies

The DA’s office has full discretion, but the published criteria for felony diversion are specific. You must be a first-time adult felony offender. That means no prior felony convictions, no prior probation (including deferred adjudication), and no prior pretrial diversion participation. You also cannot have holds above a Class C misdemeanor, cannot have pending felony charges in another jurisdiction, and cannot have any gang affiliation noted in law enforcement databases.¹

Some charges are excluded regardless of how clean your background is:

Any charge involving assault, violence, or threats of violence
Offenses involving a death or major accident
Sexual offenses, arson, and felony intoxication
First-degree manufacturing or delivery charges (second-degree cases may be reviewed individually)

The Criminal Justice Department runs a formal risk and needs assessment on each eligible referral to decide which track fits.²

How to Apply and When

For felony diversion, the deadline is hard: your referral must be submitted either before indictment or within 120 days of indictment.² Miss it and the option can be off the table.

Your defense attorney assembles the packet. It typically includes proof of employment or school enrollment, residential history, valid identification, and a letter of responsibility addressed to the District Attorney that acknowledges the incident. The letter tells the review committee whether you’re taking the case seriously.

A specialized committee reviews the packet against internal policy standards. If the review looks favorable, you sit for a mandatory in-person interview with a program officer who evaluates your suitability for supervision. The division then makes a final recommendation, and if you’re accepted, the presiding judge signs the agreement and your case moves off the active trial docket.¹

The Felony Tracks

There’s no single one-size diversion. Where you land depends on your assessment, your age, and the specifics of the charge.

Standard Supervised PTI

The most common placements are PTS PTI and CSCD PTI. Both involve monthly meetings with a supervision officer and random urinalysis. Agreements run up to 18 months. A $500 program fee applies to all standard PTI agreements, and CSCD supervision adds a $102 monthly fee. Fee waivers are available if you can’t afford the cost.¹

EAC Court PTI

The Early Administrative Closure track requires appearances in EAC Court and compliance with assigned conditions, and can also last up to 18 months. The fee is $202. It’s the lighter-touch option compared with fully supervised PTI.¹

AIM Court

AIM Court is a five-phase program only for young adults 17 to 24 at the time of the offense. It runs 13 to 18 months and involves frequent court appearances, random weekly drug testing, 40 hours of community service, clinical treatment, and individualized plans covering education, vocational skills, and life skills. Peer recovery support and transportation assistance are built in. The fee is $500, but the court considers financial hardship and can modify or waive it. Graduating from AIM ends in the same result as the other tracks: a dismissed case and immediate expunction eligibility.¹

The Misdemeanor Path

Misdemeanor pretrial intervention runs through a separate, simpler process. Instead of the felony referral pipeline, you contact the Assistant District Attorney assigned to your court for an eligibility review. If approved, you sign the agreement, pay applicable fees (or request a waiver), complete required classes or evaluations, and return proof of completion to your probation officer. The ADA then files the dismissal.²

Timelines are typically shorter. All misdemeanor prostitution cases, for example, are offered a 90- to 120-day PTI agreement. Other misdemeanor charges follow the same streamlined approach, and eligibility still turns on a first-time offense and the prosecutor’s approval.

What You’ll Have to Do

Specific obligations vary by track, but most participants face the same core requirements: regular meetings with a supervision officer, random drug and alcohol testing, community service at approved nonprofit organizations, and payment of program fees. Some participants also attend classes tied to the original charge, such as substance abuse treatment or theft awareness.

The simplest requirement is the one that most often trips people up: stay out of trouble. Any new arrest or legal violation during the supervision period can end your participation.

What Happens If You Fail

Removal isn’t just a setback. Your case returns to the active trial docket, and you’re back facing the original charges through normal prosecution. The Community Supervision and Corrections Department monitors compliance, and if you don’t meet your obligations, the agreement collapses.

You also lose the expunction eligibility that comes with successful completion, meaning any conviction that follows would be permanent on your record. Participants who treat PTI casually can end up worse off than if they’d negotiated a plea from the start.

Dismissal and Expunction

When you complete every requirement, the District Attorney’s Office files a motion to dismiss. The dismissal ends the prosecution entirely: no conviction, no probation record, no finding of guilt.¹

Dismissal alone doesn’t erase the arrest. Booking records remain publicly accessible until you file for expunction under Article 55.01 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, which specifically authorizes expunction for people who completed a pretrial intervention program under Government Code Section 76.011.³ Dallas County’s brochure confirms cases are eligible for immediate expunction on completion, with no waiting period.¹

Expunction is a separate legal proceeding. You file a petition in civil court, and if granted, the court orders every agency holding records of the arrest to destroy them. Once expunged, you can legally deny the arrest on most job applications, housing forms, and background checks. The DA’s office doesn’t handle this filing for you.

How It Differs From Deferred Adjudication

People conflate these two, and the confusion can be expensive. Both avoid a final conviction, but they leave very different fingerprints on your record.

With pretrial diversion, you never plead guilty. The agreement is between you and the prosecutor, and it happens before your case moves through the normal court process. Complete it, and your charges are dismissed and the arrest can be expunged.

Deferred adjudication requires a guilty or no-contest plea in front of a judge. The judge then defers the finding of guilt and places you on community supervision. Complete the supervision and the case is dismissed without a conviction, but the guilty plea and the deferred record stay visible. Expunction is not available. The best available remedy is an order of nondisclosure, which seals the record from most public searches but does not destroy it, and some offenses aren’t eligible for nondisclosure at all.

If you qualify for PTI, it is almost always the better option.

A Note on Professional Licensing

Even after dismissal and expunction, professional licensing boards may still ask about pretrial diversion. The Texas Medical Board, for example, explicitly asks applicants whether they have ever been granted pretrial diversion, and it verifies answers through fingerprint-based criminal history checks with DPS and the FBI.

Texas law generally prevents licensing authorities from treating a deferred adjudication dismissal as a conviction.⁴ Pretrial diversion sits in a stronger position than deferred adjudication because there is no plea and no adjudication to evaluate. But boards can still ask, and a false answer on a licensing application creates a separate problem that can result in denial or revocation regardless of the underlying charge. If you hold or plan to pursue a Texas license in healthcare, law, education, accounting, or any regulated field, ask your attorney about disclosure obligations before you assume an expunged PTI is invisible.

1
Dallas County. General Felony Pre-Trial Diversion and Specialty Courts
2
Dallas County. Restorative Justice
3
State of Texas. Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 55.01 – Right to Expunction
4
Texas Public Law. Texas Occupations Code 53.021 – Authority to Revoke, Suspend, or Deny License